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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27053368">good day falling star</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq'>deniigiq</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Pigeon and Crow [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four (Comicverse)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grades, High School, Isolation, Roombas, Teen Angst, Vulnerability, fixing things is johnny's love language to himself, improving that which does not require it is Reed's</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:21:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,578</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27053368</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with a practice book, twice forgotten.<br/>Two assignments turned in late.<br/>It started with Sue barely looking at him when she’d signed his progress report.<br/>And it all had turned into a question:</p><p>Would anyone even notice?</p><p>(Having had his whole life defined for him by being a teenage hero, Johnny struggles to know who he is and what he's worth when he's not in the suit.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Johnny Storm &amp; Susan Storm, Reed Richards &amp; Johnny Storm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Pigeon and Crow [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993912</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>468</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>good day falling star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>don't fucking look at me</p><p>I'm learning okay? I'm <em>learning</em>. I'm going to figure Johnny out if it kills me.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It started with a practice book.</p><p>Johnny left it behind on the desk in his room, and it was only once he’d gotten to class that he realized that its absence was the reason that his backpack felt lighter than usual.</p><p>His gut dropped.</p><p>He considered, fidgeting violently with his pencil, flying back home to get it, but these clothes weren’t fireproof and then he’d have to change and by the time he got back, he’d be late for Calc and he couldn’t miss Calc. Calc was the only thing that he was good at this year.</p><p>Mrs. Tirado gave him a disappointed face and a zero for the assignment. She told him that he could turn it in late for partial credit.</p><p>Johnny took the rest of the class to reflect on his life choices and decided that he was going to switch to French next semester to never have to endure the embarrassment of facing Mrs. Tirado again.</p><p>It was the only option.</p><p>The bell rang.</p><p>He left for lunch feeling like a failure.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It started with a practice book and Johnny forgetting it for the second day in a row. Two zeros. He could feel Sue’s silence and sharp eyes weighing down on the back of his shoulderblades.</p><p>He promised Mrs. Tirado that he’d bring it in on Friday. He swore.</p><p>She peered at him for a long time. Then she cleared her throat and said that she understood why he’d left it at home and not to worry about it.</p><p>She scratched at her temple a little bit, and Johnny instinctively went to scratch at his own, but his fingers ran into the bulky gauze there.</p><p><em>Pity. She’s pitying you</em>, his brain whispered. <em>Because everyone, everywhere saw you on the news last night. They all know what you were doing. They all saw your back break a window, then your face hit the pavement hard enough to dent both sides of that equation.</em></p><p>His eyes burned.</p><p>It wasn’t embarrassment.</p><p>It was shame.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It started with a practice book, twice forgotten, and two assignments turned in late.</p><p>Mrs. Tirado gave out a progress report that was supposed to be signed by everyone’s parents and returned to her.</p><p>Johnny held his in his hands.</p><p>Two assignments. Twice forgotten. 80% for the first. 90% for the second.</p><p>He wasn’t stupid. He’d done the work. The only marks off came from the lateness. 10% per day, that was Mrs. Tirado’s policy.</p><p>He stuffed it in the cover of his textbook and brought it home for the weekend where it sat where the practice book once had until Sunday night.</p><p>The halls were quiet. Reed was in the lab. Ben was out with his “friend.” Johnny didn’t know where Sue was, but he remembered the paper in his Spanish book and went to grab it and then go seek her out.</p><p>Only Sue could sign the things.</p><p>Well, that wasn’t true; Johnny was sure that Mrs. Tirado would accept Reed or Ben’s signature in place of hers. But there was something about that—maybe something stupid and petty—that made Johnny put his heel to the floor.</p><p>Only Sue, he told himself.</p><p>Only Sue could sign it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sue was scrolling through articles online and typing in search terms.</p><p>Busy.</p><p>She was busy.</p><p>“Sue?” he asked. “Progress report.”</p><p>Sue held out a hand without ungluing her eyes from her laptop screen. Johnny handed the paper off and held his breath.</p><p>93.7% in Spanish. Save from an ‘A-‘ by 3 points.</p><p>But there was an eight in that sea of nines in the assignment column. It stuck out like a dislocated thumb.</p><p>Sue felt around for a pen on her desk and signed on the line at the page of the page without even glancing up at anything but the number at the top. She handed it back and told him that he’d be doing a half-day at school tomorrow. They had work to do after lunch. He wouldn’t be eating at school, sorry.</p><p>Johnny took the paper and looked at it. He didn’t say that he never ate with anyone at school anyways. He didn’t make an excuse for the 80%.</p><p>Sue noticed him dawdling and told him to go finish his homework and then sleep.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It started with a practice book twice forgotten, two late assignments, and a progress report.</p><p>It started with Johnny packing up after Spanish and being asked by Marcel Polanco if he was going to make the news that night.</p><p>It started with a piece of gauze taped to his temple and a pitying look.</p><p>It started with Sue’s fingers, feeling around for a pen.</p><p>And all it ended with a D- in Calculus.</p><p>Reed pulled up a lab stool and rested his elbows on his knees directly in front of Johnny.</p><p>“What’s this about?” he asked quietly. Seriously.</p><p>Johnny’s throat hurt. His eyes burned. The page in his hand wasn’t printed on computer paper. It was cardstock. Mailed home. A report card.</p><p>“Johnny. What’s this about?”</p><p>Nothing. It was nothing.</p><p>“I’m just bad at math,” Johnny nearly whispered.</p><p>Reed’s silence rose and then fell like a sigh.</p><p>“This isn’t acceptable,” he said.</p><p>It wasn’t, was it?</p><p>“You’re going to retake it and you’re going to study this time.”</p><p>You’re not my dad.</p><p>“Come on. Up. Let’s see that textbook.”</p><p>…no.</p><p>“No?” Reed said like he was caught off-guard.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Johnny snapped, slipping off the stool and nearly crumpling the report card in his hand into a ball.</p><p>“It doesn’t—where are you going?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It was supposed to end with a D- in Calculus, but instead it started with a D- and ended with Sue standing at his bedroom door while Johnny fought back tears on his bed.</p><p>“Not acceptable,” Sue said. “You do not talk to Reed like that.”</p><p>She wasn’t Mom she wasn’t Mom she wasn’t Mom she wasn’t Mom she wasn’t—</p><p>“You’re going to apologize. <em>Now</em>, Jonathan.”</p><p>She wasn’t Mom.</p><p>“No,” Johnny said.</p><p>Sue’s silences brewed like their mutual namesake. They began with dark clouds and were followed by thunder.</p><p>“Johnny, I’m not playing games with you right now.”</p><p>She hadn’t even noticed.</p><p>He’d known somehow that she wouldn’t. He’d also known, although it was never spoken aloud, that the grades didn’t actually mean anything. They were a requirement to be met. A box to be checked.</p><p>But they didn’t mean anything.</p><p>That gauze on his temple was the rest of Johnny’s life. He’d wear it until death. Things like highschool, college, diplomas and degrees—they were boxes. Never necessities. Just hoops to jump through so that when people started mouth off about what gave anyone on the team the right to enter the fray, the right cards could be whipped out and flashed in their faces.</p><p>But all that mattered were the cards. It didn’t matter what they said on them. Johnny’s bleeding fingers—the moment of ignition—those were the real cards on the table. The ones that people who interrogated their family every which way failed to see, even when they were held right in front of the crowd’s faces.</p><p>It was, at its heart, unfair.</p><p>Johnny’s scars were his real credentials. The burdens he bore while everyone else—every other teenager on this side of the Atlantic--woke up and went out to take damage from people--just people. In some ways it the worst kind of damage, but in others, in <em>Johnny</em>’s way of existing, it barely scratched the surface of a miles-thick block of ice.</p><p>“I’m not saying it again,” Sue said. “You’re being a brat. Knock it off, get out there, and apologize to Reed. <em>Now</em>.”</p><p>Sue wasn’t Mom. But Johnny didn’t remember who that person had been anymore, and in the absence of even the memory, the tears had to fall down and he had to slide off the mattress and walk past the violence in Sue’s pointing finger and pitch-black stare.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Reed made a weird face when Johnny apologized to him, but Johnny didn’t stick around to give it a good look. He left the lab as soon as Sue let him and went back to the mattress. Well, the floor next to it really.</p><p>His breathing was funny. Well, not funny as in ‘haha;’ funny as in ‘a weird mix of hiccups that kept catching themselves short.’ His throat made a sound when he took in air. He could feel something moving on his neck and he slapped a hand over it, but it turned out it was just his own pulse.</p><p>It felt strange. All of it.</p><p>He felt like the core of himself had gone completely still while the skin and flesh of his body carried on with this weird juddering and rasping. He felt supernaturally aware of everything happening to him all at once. He could catalogue it and identify it, but somehow, that didn’t make any of it stop.</p><p>It went on for a long time.</p><p>He didn’t remember it stopping. He woke up with his neck aching and his head pressed uncomfortably against the wall by the foot of the bed.</p><p>He blinked into the lamp-lit room and felt heavy, like syrup made from lead.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It started with a D- in Calculus and ended up with Johnny sitting at lunch by himself, up on the roof of the science building where no one could find him, peeling celery and staring up at the sky.</p><p>He could just fly away, he told himself. Spend the rest of the day playing hooky. Not going to Calc. Not going to History.</p><p>But he didn’t know where he’d go and it was impossible to hide from the others for long.</p><p>That said, it was nice to dream a little bit. To imagine a future in a quiet place—in a room of his own. One unconnected and inaccessible to Sue and Reed and Ben.</p><p>He liked to think about shiny wooden floors and translucent curtains. A glass on a tall window sill that threw a shadow over the edge and onto the floor. Rain on the outside of the glass bathed the room in a wash of ripples and tapping and dripping-drops.</p><p>The fire got so hot sometimes, the memory of rain was an oasis.</p><p>The roof wasn’t one.</p><p>He slipped down when the coast was clear moments before the bell rang.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He found a little robot on the way home. Someone had stacked it on top of a pile of furniture with a ‘free’ sign on it on the curb. Most people walked right past it. A few bodies took a gander and then, after squinting and holding the chipped black of the cabinet up to their mental maps of their homes, carried on, on their way down the block.</p><p>Johnny stopped because the little robot was just at his chest level. It was red and black and it reminded him of a ladybug.</p><p>It was a Roomba—or technically, an off-brand miniature vacuum. But it was a Roomba.</p><p>He took it. He brought it home and put it on his desk and scrubbed the whole thing down with Lysol and then flipped it over and tried to work out how to turn it on.</p><p>It needed charging.</p><p>It didn’t have a station for that with it on the curb, though, so Johnny had to go out and get one. But he wasn’t speaking to Sue at the moment, in case she started shouting again.</p><p>He had his own bank account, but he’d never used it before. Sue had given him a card to buy lunch and the like with. She put about two hundred bucks on it per month and told him to use that. She wanted him to save his money for other things.</p><p>College, mostly.</p><p>Johnny had never questioned it. You could do a lot with two hundred bucks a month, especially when lunch was only a few bucks a day.</p><p>At the moment, he had about $150 left on the card. The Roomba charging stations were expensive on this budget, especially given that Johnny had to account for whatever replacement parts this little friend was going to need.</p><p>So he went out on the hunt—on an adventure of sorts—back into the city.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He spent the next few days hitting up thrift stores all over Manhattan, on the hunt for a charging chord or station that was compatible with his new friend. It was funny how less often people recognized him when he went out without Sue and in street clothes too big for him, the way he saw kids coming home from other schools wearing them.</p><p>The people at the thrift stores were tired, but generally nice. They shook their heads when Johnny held up his friend.</p><p>It took six tries to find someone who didn’t turn him away.</p><p>It was only a charging cable, but it was only two dollars and the guy even let Johnny make sure that it worked. He left the store with a sense of accomplishment.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Logistically speaking, he could have bought the cord or the station brand new and still had money to spare, Johnny came to realize, but he wasn’t positive that he’d have had the same feeling of satisfaction  he found sitting on the floor of his room with Ladybug flipped over on her back before him.</p><p>He’d taken her apart with care. Had put all the different screws in separate mugs that he’d filched from downstairs. He didn’t think Sue would notice them missing, but just in case, he’d only taken the ones from the back of the cupboard.</p><p>It was soothing to turn on some music and to pick at the Roomba parts, shaking them loose and twisting them back and forth, refitting them together until he figured out what they did.</p><p>There was one piece that was broken clean in half. It kept Ladybug’s little propeller device from moving her forward.</p><p>An easy fix.</p><p>He hopped out to a hardware store then another and another until he found a new part up on a shelf he couldn’t reach. He’d just about resolved to climb up onto the bottom rack when a hand reached over his head and plucked the little plastic bag holding the part from its hanging roost. Johnny lifted his head up at the arm and tracked it back to a tall man looking down at him quizzically.</p><p>“Didn’t realize y’all weren’t joined at the hip,” the tall man said. “You supposed to be out this late, kiddo?”</p><p>Damn. Recognized. Well, it was bound to happen eventually.</p><p>The man handed him the plastic bag anyways.</p><p>“I’m working on a secret project,” Johnny told him.</p><p>“My god, you’re little,” the man said.</p><p>Hmph. Johnny wasn’t <em>that</em> little. He was growing. He had big plans to be as tall as Reed by the end of the year.</p><p>“That’ll be four dollars, son,” the man said at the register.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ladybug turned on and flashed her lights and Johnny threw his fists in the air.</p><p>It didn’t last.</p><p>She futzed out barely thirty seconds later.</p><p>Johnny groaned and picked her up.</p><p>“You were so close,” he told her. “Don’t worry, though. You can do it. I believe in you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There was a knock on his door the night following Ladybug’s temporary revival. Johnny felt his shoulders go tense when the door clacked open.</p><p>He didn’t have time to hide his girl.</p><p>“Johnny?” Reed asked quietly. He poked his head into the room and Johnny yanked a sweater over everything happening on his desk. He pretended to be flustered with his laptop music and took an extra few seconds to turn it off.</p><p>“What’s up?” he asked, finally turning around to face Reed who had awkwardly tipped only a third of his body in through the door.</p><p>“You busy?” Reed asked.</p><p>Johnny watched his eyes flick around him towards the sweater-pile. He cleared his throat.</p><p>“No, just doing homework,” he said.</p><p>His saliva went bitter with the lie. He wrapped his hands around the edge of the seat of his chair.</p><p>“Homework,” Reed repeated.</p><p>Johnny nodded.</p><p>Reed held his breath.</p><p>“Okay, well. I, uh, found your textbook. I know you’ve been having a tough time with Calc lately, so I looked it over and, I have to say, this book is terrible,” he said, producing a much cleaner looking version of said book, with the actual cover showing.</p><p>Guilt flooded Johnny’s guts. He didn’t know what to say.</p><p>“Oh. It’s okay,” he said. “I get it well enough.”</p><p>Reed grimaced.</p><p>“The data begs to differ,”  he said. “Here, let’s just talk through it. Just once.”</p><p>No.</p><p>Johnny didn’t want to play books.</p><p>He was tired of playing the part and going through the motions. He wanted to work on his robot. She had a little spark in her. He’d seen it the other day.</p><p>“Here,” Reed said, coming into the room proper. “Let’s just move this—”</p><p>Johnny’s stomach dropped as Reed’s arms swept the mugs and the sweater pile up off the desk and moved them effortlessly to the bed.</p><p>“N—” he started.</p><p>“And we’ll pull up a chair,” Reed said, sending an arm out to grab one from the other room. He pulled it back with a stool from the kitchen. “And it’ll only be twenty minutes, huh?”</p><p>No.</p><p>No, no, no.</p><p>Johnny could feel his lip tremble.</p><p>“I don’t want to,” he choked out.</p><p>Reed winced but caught himself and pasted on his Superhero For Kids mask.</p><p>“Just twenty minutes, Johnny,” he said like Johnny was five years old and having a meltdown over leaving a park fountain. “That’s all. Here, you guys are working on derivatives. There’s a trick to it—”</p><p><em>No</em>.</p><p>“Johnny?”</p><p>Stop. Just. <em>Stop</em>.</p><p>“Woah, hey, buddy. What’s wrong? What’s—no—shit—fuck--No, you didn’t hear that. Johnny?”</p><p>“I just wanna be alone,” Johnny gasped out between the sudden tsunami of shuddering and hiccups.</p><p>Reed’s face was doing all sorts of things that he couldn’t understand—going wide and then crumpling in on itself and then looking all over the room, everywhere but at Johnny.</p><p>“I—“ Reed stammered. “O—Okay? Okay, let’s maybe—yeah, okay. Can you tell me why?”</p><p>No, Johnny couldn’t. He just wanted to be alone. No one ever just left him the fuck alone.</p><p>Why couldn’t he have ten minutes? Why did everything always have to be a family affair? A team effort?</p><p>Why couldn’t he do something for himself for once? Not for the city. Not for the team. Just for him.</p><p>Just for Johnny.</p><p>“Buddy, I can’t understand you. Here, let’s take some deep breaths. Follow me. Big breath <em>in</em>. Big breath <em>out</em>. Big breath in.”</p><p>It wasn’t helping.</p><p>The voice on top of the orders on top of the hands rubbing up and down Johnny’s arms made the world feel like it was happening all at once.</p><p>It was too much.</p><p>“Oh, Johnny. Come here. Come here, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”</p><p>The touch, the pressure, it made the shaking <em>worse</em>.</p><p>“Leave me alone,” Johnny pleaded, pressing hands into Reed’s chest to push him away. “<em>Please</em>.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It started with a D- in Calculus and ended with Johnny laying on his bed like a little kid on top of Reed’s chest. Reed’s arms held him loosely. One of his hands kept rubbing up and down Johnny’s spine.</p><p>Johnny was tired now. Every sound, every touch was like static, but he felt too heavy to lift his head and push Reed’s hands away.</p><p>“What’s her name?” Reed asked quietly, jerking his chin at the foot of the bed.</p><p>Ladybug.</p><p>Ladybug was her name. Because she was red and black and Johnny kept her in a net so that she didn’t miraculously wake up and scramble off while he was sleeping at night.</p><p>“Where’d you find her?”</p><p>On the side of the road.</p><p>“What’s happened to her?”</p><p>Johnny wasn’t sure. He thought she’d probably been kicked or something. Overworked maybe. Only parts of her turned on, even with his methodical replacement of all her visibly damaged guts.</p><p>Reed’s hand started combing through Johnny’s hair and Johnny smashed his face into his ribs to escape it. The ribs bounced with a laugh that didn’t make it to Reed’s lips.</p><p>“Is this what you’ve been doing instead of homework?” Reed asked.</p><p>Caught.</p><p>Man, it sucked.</p><p>Reed’s hand went back to rubbing up and down his spine with more pressure than before.</p><p>“It’s okay,” he murmured. “I just wanted to know.”</p><p>Johnny sniffed and blinked the new tears away. He felt like a baby. It was horrible. He needed it to stop approximately yesterday.</p><p>“Johnny, we got a letter from your math teacher.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p><em>No</em>.</p><p>“Do you have friends at school?” Reed asked so gently it felt like a threat.</p><p>“Define friends,” Johnny mumbled.</p><p>The hand found its way to his hair again and this time he didn’t try to hide from it.</p><p>“I know people,” Johnny said.</p><p>“You never talk about school,” Reed pointed out.</p><p>“There’s nothing to talk about. School’s school,” Johnny huffed.</p><p>The hand carried on in his hair.</p><p>“Your math teacher told Sue that he’s concerned because you started sitting by the door. He says you were fine a month ago, then out of nowhere tuned out. Stopped turning in homework. He says that he can see where you’ve erased the right answers on your tests.”</p><p>Shut up.</p><p>“Johnny, have you ever heard of Benford’s law?”</p><p>No. Shut up.</p><p>“It’s a funny thing. Suggests that the number of numbers that appears in a given set of them almost always forms an exponential function. Means that in the whole world, there are always more ones than twos, more twos than threes, more threes than fours—all the way to nine. If you take any substantial dataset and parse it out into numbers on their own and then graphed them according to frequency used, you should be able to find Benford’s law at work in it.”</p><p>Johnny could see where this was going and it sucked.</p><p>“Because good ole Benford is so reliable, you can use it to figure out things like tax fraud,” Reed continued.</p><p>“You callin’ me a fraud, Reed?” Johnny rasped.</p><p>Reed’s ribs bounced again.</p><p>“Depends on your math teacher's reliability, and I suppose, partially on you,” he said. “So you tell me, are you bein’ a fraud?”</p><p>“Yes,” Johnny admitted.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because.”</p><p>“Do you not like school, Johnny? Is someone bullying you?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Then why?” Reed asked. “Help me understand. Sue’s worried that someone’s hurting you. She’s about to write a letter, bud. No one wants her to write a letter.”</p><p>Johnny huffed.</p><p>“I dunno,” he said.</p><p>It all seemed so selfish now. It was easier to play dumb.</p><p>Not that Reed’s giant head full of Benford’s law was willing to go along with that; he made a loud, exaggerated sound of effort as he hauled Johnny up to sitting with him.</p><p>“Come on, now,” he said. “You’re a brilliant kid. Everyone knows this. Help me help you.”</p><p>Did everyone know that, Reed? Did they really?</p><p>Because from what Johnny could see, everyone knew that he was a hero. Full stop. End of. That was what he was and that was what he’d be until he was either broken beyond repair or dead.</p><p>He was a tool. A hammer maybe—actually, more like a blowtorch.</p><p>He and Ladybug had this in common. They were both tools left outside of their boxes.</p><p>“<em>Johnny</em>. Talk to me.”</p><p>Johnny felt his shoulders creeping up and his face getting warm again.</p><p>It sucked.</p><p>God, it sucked. But Reed clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he had thoroughly invaded Johnny’s privacy, so what the hell?</p><p>Why not?</p><p>Maybe if Sue knew, then she’d…something. Johnny didn’t even know anymore.</p><p>“Johnny, do you want me to count to three? Because if that’s what it takes then I’ll—”</p><p>Jesus, just <em>stop already</em>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It started with a practice book, twice forgotten.</p><p>Two assignments turned in late.</p><p>It started with Sue barely looking at him when she’d signed his progress report.</p><p>And it all had turned into a question:</p><p>Would anyone even notice?</p><p>That question snowballed into a series of others. What did it even matter? Does anyone care? Why am I doing this? Why put forth all this effort to tick a box? Who is this helping? Why am I doing this?</p><p>Why am I doing this?</p><p><em>Why am I doing this</em>?</p><p>So he’d stopped doing it.</p><p>Slowly. Gradually.</p><p>Just to see what would happen. Just to see if anyone noticed.</p><p>And then they hadn’t. Not really. Only when that grade had sunken to failing one and only when the school had sent a letter home had anyone even noticed anything different going on with him.</p><p>It made Johnny feel like a massive idiot. He’d wanted to scream. He’d cried. He’d gone out and hidden from everyone, at home, at school, at work, at heroes.</p><p>It was like he lived in this box and he couldn’t escape it; even when he tried, he just ended up falling into another box, then another one, then another one.</p><p>And then there was yelling and scolding and being told to apologize for giving attitude, when all this time, it was <em>Sue</em> who hadn’t even noticed anything.</p><p>She wasn’t Mom.</p><p>It was horrible, yeah. But this kind of thing proved it. Mom would have noticed. Dad would have noticed—maybe. Maybe before all the bad stuff. Dad would have noticed.</p><p>But Mom and Dad weren’t here anymore, which left Johnny with Sue, who didn’t notice. Which left Johnny with, well. Johnny.</p><p>Just him.</p><p>It was nice to be alone.</p><p>He didn’t have to break bones for people he didn’t know. He didn’t have to stand up straight, never slouch, comb his hair, or become a raging, burning, falling star for the sake of people who forgot about him as soon as he left their field of vision.</p><p>He didn’t have to be anyone. He could be Johnny.</p><p>Johnny who sat in a room with a broken Roomba and slowly fixed her up. Johnny who liked music and went out at night to hardware stores where old men told him that he really needed to eat more so that he might reach the top shelf in a few years here.</p><p>He liked having the Roomba and the tall, old man, and the sound of the city at night.</p><p>It made him feel like he wasn’t trapped in this building with this family in this hero-role for the rest of his life.</p><p>It made him feel like he was a part of something that he’d chosen to be.</p><p>He didn’t have friends at school, Reed. He was barely there past lunch for half of the week. All his teachers looked at him with pity. The standards for everything were all out of whack and even if Johnny could draw a crowd and make everyone—including those teachers—laugh and smile and feel at ease, it all felt like an extension of the work. The job.</p><p>He wanted to job to end at some point. But he didn’t know how to make it end without ending it for good and forever.</p><p>Without dying.</p><p>People needed him to be Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. But at this point, the only person Johnny knew was Johnny Storm the Human Torch.</p><p>The person who he was when he wasn’t that guy was a mystery. Johnny barely knew him. Couldn’t remember him, that was for sure.</p><p>So that was why he’d done it, Reed. To be selfish. And he was sorry, but he wasn’t ready to stop yet. It felt too nice to stop so soon. It had only been a few weeks. Maybe just another couple of days?</p><p>He’d do the homework. He’d raise the grades. He’d stop playing the music at night and running around all over the city. He’d sleep like Sue told him to.</p><p>But not for a few days more? Until Friday, maybe? Was that too much to ask?</p><p>“Oh, Johnny,” Reed said. “Oh, kiddo.”  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sue’s lips were pale and thin across from Johnny at the table. She’d told him to sit.</p><p>It was Friday. The game was played. The rules came back down. Sue was Mom. More Mom than Mom had been at this point.</p><p>He sat.</p><p>He couldn’t make himself look into her eyes. He only got as far as her lips.</p><p>“I’m sorry for lying,” he said hoarsely to the table. “It was ungrateful. And selfish. And I’ll do better.”</p><p>His throat hurt. Swallowing didn’t help.</p><p>“Jonathan,” Sue said after what felt like forever. “You are the only brother that I have.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Johnny hiccupped.</p><p>“Don’t be sorry,” Sue said. “It’s—” she cut herself off and sighed. “I was wrapped up in things,” she admitted. “Sometimes, I get wrapped up in things and I forget that you’re—”</p><p>Her voice sounded funny.</p><p>“I forget that you’re still a baby,” she said.</p><p>Johnny scrubbed at his face.</p><p>“I’m not,” he said. “I’m gonna do better.”</p><p>“Johnny, you’re <em>sixteen</em>,” Sue said. “I know that feels like ages, but in the grander scheme of things it’s nothing. It’s not your job to make grades. It’s not your job to save lives. We—I don’t want you to feel like that’s how you earn your keep in this family, okay?”</p><p>Johnny didn’t know what to do with this information. It felt false, slippery, and wrong.</p><p>“I don’t know how else to,” he said.</p><p>“THAT’S—” Sue caught herself and breathed through it. “You’re not understanding me.”</p><p>Heat, heat, heat, heat.</p><p>“Hey, listen to me. Don’t cry. There’s no reason to cry. Just because you don’t understand something does not mean that you’ve done something wrong.”</p><p>Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.</p><p>Johnny’s fingers found their way into fists and a few drops of something hot found their way to the top of them.</p><p>Sue made an exasperated sound and Johnny saw her elbow hit the table. He didn’t follow it up. He knew that she was holding her face.</p><p>“How did we get here?” Sue asked quietly.</p><p>Johnny shrugged as best as his jittery body would allow.</p><p>“Okay, let’s start over,” Sue said, removing her elbow from the table. Both of her hands came into Johnny’s field of vision. “Put ‘em up, soldier,” she said.</p><p>It sounded like play.</p><p>It sounded like her standing on a couch with two finger guns pointed down at Johnny on the floor.</p><p>His fingers twitched as he uncurled them. He set them on her open palms.</p><p>“You,” Sue said, taking one hand away to lift up his chin before replacing it, “Are perfectly. Fine.”</p><p>She shook their hands one each syllable.</p><p>“You are Johnny Storm. My little brother. A wonderful, smart, <em>kind</em> human being who doesn’t <em>need</em> to do anything to be loved,” She said. “And I am sorry that I did <em>anything</em> to make you feel like that was not the case. Do you understand?”  </p><p>“Sort of?” Johnny creaked.</p><p>Sue huffed.</p><p>“It’s a work in progress,” she said, more to herself apparently, than Johnny. She lifted her eyes to his, though, and they weren’t angry. “Now, the reason I want you to get good grades is because I want you to be able to go to college and learn things that Reed and I can’t teach you, okay? I want you to go to school and make friends and to learn how to talk and act among normal people, so that in case anything ever happened to us—me, Reed, and Ben—you would have everything you needed to get on okay on your own. That’s why I want you to do that. Do you understand?”</p><p>“Yes,” Johnny said.</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>Was that it, then? Argument over?</p><p>“It’s not an argument, Johnny. This is us talking--communicating. It’s healthy.”</p><p>“It’s horrible,” Johnny said. He sniffed, then added “I replaced you with a Roomba.”</p><p>Sue stared.</p><p>“That tracks,” she deadpanned.</p><p>“Her name’s Ladybug,” Johnny said. “But she won’t stay on and I don’t know how to fix her.”</p><p>Sue looked like she was fighting the urge to roll her eyes with her whole head. Instead she stood up from the table.</p><p>“The good news is that we’ve got a guy for that,” she said. “Come on. Wash your face. I’m pretty sure he kidnapped it the second you left the room.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Reed was a <em>monster</em> and he was never allowed to touch any of Johnny’s friends <em>ever again</em>.</p><p>“She works,” he said breezily, waving at the creature with new metal wings savagely eating through the carpet at the edge of the kitchen.</p><p>Johnny stared at him in silent horror.</p><p>“I’m going to cry,” he announced. “And then I’m going to tell Ben and then he’s going to sit on you.”</p><p>Reed took the moment to consider each step of this arrangement.</p><p>“Okay, but consider: what if you <em>didn’t</em> tell Ben?” he asked.</p><p>Johnny snatched DemonBug up off the floor. She made a sound like a blender. He held Reed’s eye and set his jaw.</p><p>“I’m finished with all of you,” Johnny said. “I’ll be in my office. Good day, foul sir.”</p><p>He whipped around and stomped off.</p><p>He didn’t miss Reed’s bark of laughter, though. Didn’t miss Sue’s either. It was enough to make his own cheeks tighten a little, but he caught himself.</p><p>He needed to look extra pitiful for Ben.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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